Dune (13 page)

“What’re you holding back?” Jessica asked. “This isn’t like you, Paul.”

He shrugged, recounted the exchange with Mapes.
And Jessica thought of the message of the leaf. She came to sudden decision,
showed Paul the leaf, told him its message.

“My father must learn of this at once,” he said. “I’ll radiograph it in code
and get if off.”

“No,” she said. “You will wait until you can see him alone. As few as
possible must learn about it.”

“Do you mean we should trust no one?”

“There’s another possibility,” she said. “This message may have been meant
to get to us. The people who gave it to us may believe it’s true, but it may be
that the only purpose was to get this message to us.”

Paul’s face remained sturdily somber. “To sow distrust and suspicion in our
ranks, to weaken us that way,” he said.

“You must tell your father privately and caution him about this aspect of
it, ” she said.

“I understand.”

She turned to the tall reach of filter glass, stared out to the southwest
where the sun of Arrakis was sinking–a yellowed ball above the cliffs.

Paul turned with her, said: “I don’t think it’s Hawat, either. Is it
possible it’s Yueh?”

“He’s not a lieutenant or companion,” she said. “And I can assure you he
hates the Harkonnens as bitterly as we do.”

Paul directed his attention to the cliffs, thinking: And it couldn’t be
Gurney . . . or Duncan. Could it be one of the sub-?lieutenants? Impossible.
They’re all from families that’ve been loyal to us for generations–for good
reason.

Jessica rubbed her forehead, sensing her own fatigue. So much peril here!
She looked out at the filter-?yellowed landscape, studying it. Beyond the ducal
grounds stretched a high-?fenced storage yard–lines of spice silos in it with
stilt-?legged watchtowers standing around it like so many startled spiders. She
could see at least twenty storage yards of silos reaching out to the cliffs of
the Shield Wall–silos repeated, stuttering across the basin.

Slowly, the filtered sun buried itself beneath the horizon. Stars leaped
out. She saw one bright star so low on the horizon that it twinkled with a
clear, precise rhythm–a trembling of light: blink-?blink-?blink-?blink-?blink . . .

Paul stirred beside her in the dusky room.

But Jessica concentrated on that single bright star, realizing that it was
too low, that it must come from the Shield Wall cliffs.

Someone signaling!

She tried to read the message, but it was in no code she had ever learned.

Other lights had come on down on the plain beneath the cliffs: little
yellows spaced out against blue darkness. And one light off to their left grew
brighter, began to wink back at the cliff–very fast: blinksquirt, glimmer,
blink!

And it was gone.

The false star in the cliff winked out immediately.

Signals . . . and they filled her with premonition.

Why were lights used to signal across the basin? she asked herself. Why
couldn’t they use the communications network?

The answer was obvious: the communinet was certain to be tapped now by
agents of the Duke Leto. Light signals could only mean that messages were being
sent between his enemies–between Harkonnen agents.

There came a tapping at the door behind them and the voice of Hawat’s man;
“All clear, sir . . . m’Lady. Time to be getting the young master to his
father.”

= = = = = =
It is said that the Duke Leto blinded himself to the perils of Arrakis, that he
walked heedlessly into the pit. Would it not be more likely to suggest he had
lived so long in the presence of extreme danger he misjudged a change in its
intensity? Or is it possible he deliberately sacrificed himself that his son
might find a better life? All evidence indicates the Duke was a man not easily
hoodwinked.
-from “Muad’Dib: Family Commentaries” by the Princess Irulan

The Duke Leto Atreides leaned against a parapet of the landing control tower
outside Arrakeen. The night’s first moon, an oblate silver coin, hung well above
the southern horizon. Beneath it, the jagged cliffs of the Shield Wall shone
like parched icing through a dust haze. To his left, the lights of Arrakeen
glowed in the haze–yellow . . . white . . . blue.

He thought of the notices posted now above his signature all through the
populous places of the planet: “Our Sublime Padishah Emperor has charged me to
take possession of this planet and end all dispute.”

The ritualistic formality of it touched him with a feeling of loneliness.
Who was fooled by that fatuous legalism? Not the Fremen, certainly. Nor the
Houses Minor who controlled the interior trade of Arrakis . . . and were
Harkonnen creatures almost to a man.

They have tried to take the life of my son!

The rage was difficult to suppress.

He saw lights of a moving vehicle coming toward the landing field from
Arrakeen. He hoped it was the guard and troop carrier bringing Paul. The delay
was galling even though he knew it was prompted by caution on the part of
Hawat’s lieutenant.

They have tried to take the life of my son!

He shook his head to drive out the angry thoughts, glanced back at the field
where five of his own frigates were posted around the rim like monolithic
sentries.

Better a cautious delay than . . .

The lieutenant was a good one, he reminded himself. A man marked for
advancement, completely loyal.

“Our Sublime Padishah Emperor . . . ”

If the people of this decadent garrison city could only see the Emperor’s
private note to his “Noble Duke”–the disdainful allusions to veiled men and
women: “ . . . but what else is one to expect of barbarians whose dearest dream
is to live outside the ordered security of the faufreluches?”

The Duke felt in this moment that his own dearest dream was to end all class
distinctions and never again think of deadly order. He looked up and out of the
dust at the unwinking stars, thought: Around one of those little lights circles
Caladan . . . but I’ll never again see my home. The longing for Caladan was a
sudden pain in his breast. He felt that it did not come from within himself, but
that it reached out to him from Caladan. He could not bring himself to call this
dry wasteland of Arrakis his home, and he doubted he ever would.

I must mask my feelings, he thought. For the boy’s sake. If ever he’s to
have a home, this must be it. I may think of Arrakis as a hell I’ve reached
before death, but he must find here that which will inspire him. There must be
something.

A wave of self-?pity, immediately despised and rejected, swept through him,
and for some reason he found himself recalling two lines from a poem Gurney
Halleck often repeated–

“My lungs taste the air of Time
Blown past falling sands . . . ”
Well, Gurney would find plenty of falling sands here, the Duke thought. The
central wastelands beyond those moon-?frosted cliffs were desert–barren rock,
dunes, and blowing dust, an uncharted dry wilderness with here and there along
its rim and perhaps scattered through it, knots of Fremen. If anything could buy
a future for the Atreides line, the Fremen just might do it.

Provided the Harkonnens hadn’t managed to infect even the Fremen with their
poisonous schemes.

They have tried to take the life of my son!

A scraping metal racket vibrated through the tower, shook the parapet
beneath his arms. Blast shutters dropped in front of him, blocking the view.

Shuttle’s coming in, he thought. Time to go down and get to work. He turned
to the stairs behind him, headed down to the big assembly room, trying to remain
calm as he descended, to prepare his face for the coming encounter.

They have tried to take the life of my son!

The men were already boiling in from the field when he reached the yellow-
domed room. They carried their spacebags over their shoulders, shouting and
roistering like students returning from vacation.

“Hey! Feel that under your dogs? That’s gravity, man!” “How many G’s does
this place pull? Feels heavy.” “Nine-?tenths of a G by the book.”

The crossfire of thrown words filled the big room.

“Did you get a good look at this hole on the way down? Where’s all the loot
this place’s supposed to have?” “The Harkonnens took it with ‘em!” “Me for a hot
shower and a soft bed!” “Haven’t you heard, stupid? No showers down here. You
scrub your ass with sand!” “Hey! Can it! The Duke!”

The Duke stepped out of the stair entry into a suddenly silent room.

Gurney Halleck strode along at the point of the crowd, bag over one
shoulder, the neck of his nine-?string baliset clutched in the other hand. They
were long-?fingered hands with big thumbs, full of tiny movements that drew such
delicate music from the baliset.

The Duke watched Halleck, admiring the ugly lump of a man, noting the glass-
splinter eyes with their gleam of savage understanding. Here was a man who lived
outside the faufreluches while obeying their every precept. What was it Paul had
called him?

“Gurney, the valorous.”

Halleck’s wispy blond hair trailed across barren spots on his head. His wide
mouth was twisted into a pleasant sneer, and the scar of the inkvine whip
slashed across his jawline seemed to move with a life of its own. His whole air
was of casual, shoulder-?set capability. He came up to the Duke, bowed.

“Gurney,” Leto said.

“My Lord.” He gestured with the baliset toward the men in the room. “This is
the last of them. I’d have preferred coming in with the first wave, but . . . ”

“There are still some Harkonnens for you,” the Duke said. “Step aside with
me, Gurney, where we may talk.”

“Yours to command, my Lord.”

They moved into an alcove beside a coil-?slot water machine while the men
stirred restlessly in the big room. Halleck dropped his bag into a corner, kept
his grip on the baliset.

“How many men can you let Hawat have?” the Duke asked.

“Is Thufir in trouble. Sire?”

“He’s lost only two agents, but his advance men gave us an excellent line on
the entire Harkonnen setup here. If we move fast we may gain a measure of
security, the breathing space we require. He wants as many men as you can spare-
-men who won’t balk at a little knife work.”

“I can let him have three hundred of my best,” Halleck said. “Where shall I
send them?”

“To the main gate. Hawat has an agent there waiting to take them.”

“Shall I get about it at once, Sire?”
“In a moment. We have another problem. The field commandant will hold the
shuttle here until dawn on a pretext. The Guild Heighliner that brought us is
going on about its business, and the shuttle’s supposed to make contact with a
cargo ship taking up a load of spice.”

“Our spice, m’Lord?”

“Our spice. But the shuttle also will carry some of the spice hunters from
the old regime. They’ve opted to leave with the change of fief and the Judge of
the Change is allowing it. These are valuable workers, Gurney, about eight
hundred of them. Before the shuttle leaves, you must persuade some of those men
to enlist with us.”

“How strong a persuasion, Sire?”

“I want their willing cooperation, Gurney. Those men have experience and
skills we need. The fact that they’re leaving suggests they’re not part of the
Harkonnen machine. Hawat believes there could be some bad ones planted in the
group, but he sees assassins in every shadow.”

“Thufir has found some very productive shadows in his time, m’Lord.”

“And there are some he hasn’t found. But I think planting sleepers in this
outgoing crowd would show too much imagination for the Harkonnens.”

“Possibly, Sire. Where are these men?”

“Down on the lower level, in a waiting room. I suggest you go down and play
a tune or two to soften their minds, then turn on the pressure. You may offer
positions of authority to those who qualify. Offer twenty per cent higher wages
than they received under the Harkonnens.”

“No more than that, Sire? I know the Harkonnen pay scales. And to men with
their termination pay in their pockets and the wanderlust on them . . . well.
Sire, twenty per cent would hardly seem proper inducement to stay.”

Leto spoke impatiently: “Then use your own discretion in particular cases.
Just remember that the treasury isn’t bottomless. Hold it to twenty per cent
whenever you can. We particularly need spice drivers, weather scanners, dune
men–any with open sand experience.”

“I understand, Sire. ‘They shall come all for violence: their faces shall
sup up as the east wind, and they shall gather the captivity of the sand.’ ”

“A very moving quotation,” the Duke said. “Turn your crew over to a
lieutenant. Have him give a short drill on water discipline, then bed the men
down for the night in the barracks adjoining the field. Field personnel will
direct them. And don’t forget the men for Hawat.”

“Three hundred of the best, Sire.” He took up his spacebag. “Where shall I
report to you when I’ve completed my chores?”

“I’ve taken over a council room topside here. We’ll hold staff there. I want
to arrange a new planetary dispersal order with armored squads going out first.”

Halleck stopped in the act of turning away, caught Leto’s eye. “Are you
anticipating that kind of trouble, Sire? I thought there was a Judge of the
Change here.”

“Both open battle and secret,” the Duke said. “There’ll be blood aplenty
spilled here before we’re through.”

“ ‘And the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon
the dry land,’ ” Halleck quoted.

The Duke sighed. “Hurry back, Gurney.”

“Very good, m’Lord.” The whipscar rippled to his grin. “ ‘Behold, as a wild
ass in the desert, go I forth to my work.’ ” He turned, strode to the center of
the room, paused to relay his orders, hurried on through the men.

Leto shook his head at the retreating back. Halleck was a continual
amazement–a head full of songs, quotations, and flowery phrases . . . and the
heart of an assassin when it came to dealing with the Harkonnens.